is a supervisor, who doesn't need a gun
because he can grab a handphone and call for troops. Over the
supervisors, there are higher supervisors. Everybody has it just enough
better than the level below him that he's afraid of losing his job and
being busted back to fieldhand."

"That's it exactly, Commodore," Degbrend said. "The whole society is a
slave hierarchy. Everybody curries favor with the echelon above, and
keeps his eye on the echelon below to make sure he isn't being undercut.
We have something not too unlike that, ourselves. Any organizational
society is, in some ways, like a slave society. And everything is
determined by established routine. The whole thing has simply been
running on momentum for at least five centuries, and if we hadn't come
smashing in with a situation none of the routines covered, it would have
kept on running for another five, till everything wore out and stopped.
I heard about those missile-stations, by the way. They're typical of
everything here."

"That's another thing," Erskyll interrupted. "These Lords-Master are the
descendants of the old Space-Vikings, and the slaves of the original
inhabitants. The Space Vikings were a technologically advanced people;
they had all the old Terran Federation science and technology, and a lot
they developed for themselves on the Sword-Worlds."

"Well? They still had a lot of it, on the Sword-Worlds, two centuries
ago when we took them over."

"But technology always drives out slavery; that's a fundamental law of
socio-economics. Slavery is economically unsound; it cannot compete with
power-industry, let alone cybernetics and robotics."

He was tempted to remind young Obray of Erskyll that there were no such
things as fundamental laws of socio-economics; merely usually reliable
generalized statements of what can more or less be depended upon to
happen under most circumstances. He resisted the temptation. Count
Erskyll had had enough shocks, today, without adding to them by
gratuitous blasphemy.

"In this case, Obray, it worked in reverse. The Space Vikings enslaved
the Adityans to hold them in subjugation. That was a politico-military
necessity. Then, being committed to slavery, with a slave population who
had to be made to earn their keep, they found cybernetics and robotics
economically unsound."

"And almost at once, they began appointing slave overseers, and the
technicians would begin training slave assistants. Then there would be
slav